Stuff

YouGov’s eve-of-poll figures for the London election – the only pollster to produce a true eve-of-poll effort with fieldwork within a few days of actual voting – has topline figures of JOHNSON 43%, LIVINGSTONE 36%, PADDICK 13%. Minor party support is split Green 2%, BNP 2%, UKIP 1%, Alan Craig of the CPA 1% and Lindsey German of the Left List 1%.

After second preference votes have been re-allocated Boris Johnson is projected to win by 53% to 47% for Ken Livingstone. This suggests that the second preference votes have broken in favour of Ken Livingstone.

Several people including Nick Sparrow and Mike Smithson have rightly pointed out that polling figures for how second preferences split aren’t particularly useful to us because of the small sample – if you’ve only got 170 people saying their are voting for Brian Paddick, the margin of error on how they divide between Ken and Boris is huge. Still – if Boris Johnson does have a 7 point lead on first preferences, the second preferences would have to break in favour of Livingstone to an absurdly unrealistic degree for him to overcome it, given the number that are unused or given to minor candidates.

Voting intention in the assembly stands at CON 40%, LAB 33%, LDEM 14%. Others include the Greens on 4%, BNP on 3%, UKIP 2%, Christian Choice 1%, Left List 1%, Respect 1%, Abolish the Congestion Charge 1%. In an earlier YouGov poll the assembly question was asked about only the constituency vote, not the more interesting list vote. I’ve sadly no idea which these were asked about.

Have just realised what EDP stands for which explains alot. I’m watching the BBC as I think they are better but that’s a matter of opinion. If the Tories really are up 6% on 2004 I think GB will come under enormous pressure and he may not survive past the Autumn. Interesting times!

It’s also interesting to see how the minor parties fare. Some of them might benefit from Labour voters being disillusioned, but unable to bring themselves to vote Tory.
I see that the Tories have gained Nuneaton, but the BNP also gained two seats there for instance.

As always in elections, there are surprise results in all directions (e.g. Worcester was expected to go Tory, but not Southampton).
But overall, it looks like a good night for the Tories, with improvements even on the good results of 2004 (which apparently is the comparison year).

Keith, so the Tories some 19% ahead. OK so its only local elections but it seems to indicate that YouGov’s polling, giving larger Tory lead is acceptable. So they could be right on the Boris issue as well

Yes, I’m not about to predict a Libdem landslide from that. But it does indicate a government in very serious trouble. I can’t remember, but I think in the last years of the Major government, there were nights just like this for the Conservatives, and I don’t think they fell behind the libdems.

How can we relate these polls to the opinion polls?
The BBC now projects 44:24:25 in terms of national share of the vote. Even I don’t think it’s come to that yet for Labour. But something like 44:29:20 would seem credible. What are the data on this?

Fluffy – I don’t think Labour have lost the support of the Guardian. They have been as reliably anti-Boris Johnson in the last few weeks as the Standard have been anti-Ken, and I’m not think anyone would have had the Standard down as a neutral party.

(And can you stop calling them nEU-Labour. Something tells me it isn’t a term of endearment when you use it, so it doesn’t really add to non-pastisan discussion does it?)

well since last night things have not changed much at all after around 68% of councils reporting the conservatives look like gaining around 230-235 seats, labour look like losing around 260 seats and the lib dems could gain 15-20 seats, from what i understand the ld vote went up slightly in coventry stoping the conservatives from holding the council,even so some of the wards were only Con by 200 or 300 votes, nuneaton and bedworth was clearly going to be a con gain, bury was close and it could have gone the other way, now just wating for the remaining results from councils in wales

Anthony:
The Guardian have thrown the kitchen sink at Boris “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid” “bigoted, lying, Old Etonian buffoon” etc.. Whereas the Evening Standard at least had specific stories about Ken’s abuses.

I still want to know whether you have any views on how to map Local Election results into National Polls?